Bar Absinthe
by BohemianTwinkle
Summary: How long has it been? It's been a while, a long long while.


**Author's Note:**Piece that came out of me after sitting in my room crying for an hour and then wondering how long it had been since my Mum was diagnosed with cancer.

**Disclaimer: **I didn't lose my mind, it was mine to give away. I never said this was mine, so if you sue me, I'll sue you right back.

There was an atmosphere of thick, poisonous smoke in rings and clouds sticking and clinging fixatedly to the ceiling like a cloud dissipating after a storm.  
There was the out of tune cry of piano keys stringing together into some kind of song, resonating disturbingly over the scarce ripple of voices in conversations of drunken slurs, miserable tales, sorrowful memories, intoxicated hallucinations, depressing moans, suicidal farewells and giggling fits under the influence of a mythical induced dancing sprite.

Grime had settled in the creases of the walls, dirt had melted its way into the crevices of the floors. The once expensive and fascinating new inventions called light bulbs hung broken in their sockets from the ceiling and the orangey luminance of oil lamps and waxing candles had taken their place again. The pictures on the walls were either hidden with dust or littered with cracks and breaks, the posters torn, the silk tablecloths mostly sold for money or those that were left had moulded and flaked with age.

The folk that occupied the barstools and the decaying tables had changed from innocent, inspired, carefree, revolutionaries to dark and devious, broken and battered, twisted and tortured, defeated and damned shades of grey and black silhouettes of men and women lolling and amusing themselves in their misery with shots and bottles of infamous Absinthe. Coming and going as they pleased with eyes so bloodshot and speech so impaired with what could be debated as either tears, madness or forgetfulness on how to pronounce words in the first place, until their coming and going finally stopped – usually due to the arrival of Death himself.

A bottle sat on a table off to the corner, opened but not yet poured into the waiting, chipped glasses. If you had enough imagination you could see the liquid fuming and stewing inside with the devilish sprite writhing beneath it, impatient to get out and into the veins of her drinkers, put out by the conversation that was delaying her doing this, as it happened so often. She watched with red demonic eyes as the two sullen, solemn faces spoke softly and absently to each other, only just pushing the words off their tongues.

'How long has it been?' a coarse English based voice

'It's been a while,' French, so engulfed in sorrow but still with a fools melody of hope.

'A long while?'

'A very long while,'

A harsh exhalation of air, 'It's so strange, I seem to forget to note the days,'

'Understandable,' flat, a voice that doesn't seem to know what it's saying.

'I can remember it,' thoughtfully conveyed, 'if it's so long ago, why can I remember it?'

The bottle is lifted and dipped, yellow green intoxicant rolls out of it to splash and bubble in dirty, chipped glasses.

'Drink, you might forget,' assurance from the French voice, half-hearted assurance.

'Only if I'm lucky,'

The glasses are tipped and the drink rumbles and sears down their throats, burning here, numbing there, tinting the blood a sickly green. Their eyes barely widen at the initial shock of the drug anymore, their faces barely react, only recoil into a haunted emptiness a little more.

The fairy lands on the table between them and spins on her heels, spraying sprinkles and sparkles of tiny emerald diamonds as she goes. They look at her twice, making sure she's really there, but barely raise an eyelid in reply to her dancing, her teasing. They descend a little more into their own worlds thinking it is safe to be inside themselves, keeping quiet so the fairy won't try and get to them. After only moments their eyes wander away from the dancing fairy and she zips through the air to keep their gazes, they begin a conversation again as the fairy chases their eyes around the room, starting exactly with exactly the same question, only a different answer, as though they'd forgotten they'd said a word before.

'How long has it been?' the brittle English will croak.

'Not long,' fools hope French would decide.

'Not that long?'

'Maybe a little bit,'

A quick breath in, 'It's so strange, it seems so long ago,'

'Indeed, it does,' eyes roll around the room, voice rattles in his throat.

'I can't remember,' frustrated, head in hands, 'If it wasn't that long ago, why can't I remember?'

Once again the bottle is lifted, dipped and another glass is poured, the fairy watches with flashing eyes and begins to dance again.

'Drink, you might remember,'

'If I'm lucky,'

Down the liquid goes again, burning what was numbed and numbing what was burnt the first time around and the blood is stained a slightly darker shade. But their reaction stays the same, only the men they once were cry out at the torture of the drug but they are too deep inside, drowned by stupor to be heard, or felt.

The fairy tires of them by the second drink, her initial eagerness to escape the bottle to taunt and tease them now seems a rather dull thing to do. She still follows their eyes but she knows by now that they are eyes that look but don't see, a pair of grey and a pair of brown absorbing nothing, caught between the voids of remembrance and forgetting with bodies and minds too deteriorated to grasp time or place. Their only path now is to drink, and see what happens next, with that same conversation in between.

'How long has it been?'

'Too long.'

'Too long?'

'Oui,'

'Too…long,' a sorrowful repetition

'Drink.'


End file.
